WASHINGTON (AP) — In President Donald Trump’s idealized framing, the United States was at its zenith in the 1890s, when top hats and shirtwaists were fashionable and typhoid fever often killed more soldiers than combat.
It was a time of rapid population growth and transformation from an agricultural economy toward a sprawling industrial system, in which poverty was widespread while barons of phenomenal wealth held tremendous sway over politicians who often helped further grow their financial empires.
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“We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept,” Trump said days after taking office. “It’s fine, it’s OK. But it would have been very much better.”
The desire to recreate the Gilded Age is fueled by Trump’s fondness for tariffs. It’s also why he praises the nation’s 25th president, William McKinley, a Republican who was in office from 1897 until being assassinated in 1901.
Experts on the era say Trump, also a Republican, is idealizing a time rife with government and business corruption, social turmoil and inequality. They also argue he’s dramatically overestimating the role tariffs played in stimulating the economy.
“The most astonishing thing for historians is that nobody in the Gilded Age economy — except for the very rich — wanted to live in the Gilded Age economy,” said Richard White, a history professor emeritus at Stanford University.
Trump says high tariffs and low interest rates, like those the U.S. had after the Civil War, can hastily pay down today’s federal debt and fatten government coffers while boosting domestic manufacturers and enticing foreign producers to move to the U.S.
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The White House has rushed to raise tariffs on imports from China and on aluminum and steel made abroad while promising import levies will soon increase on new, foreign-made cars, microchips and pharmaceuticals. Trump also increased tariffs on Canada and Mexico, though he later delayed most of them.
Trump has similar plans for potentially every country the U.S. does business with, saying broad “reciprocal” import taxes are coming April 2 and will be consistent with levies other countries charge U.S. manufacturers to export their goods.
Was America really at its wealthiest from 1870 to 1913?
The Gilded Age featured extraordinary wealth for a small class of people that largely obscured rampant poverty for many other Americans. Many contemporary politicians were openly influenced by the famed robber barons, builders of monopolies who stoked industrialization while shaping the way millions of other Americans lived and worked.
Overall, the U.S. economy grew rapidly between 1870 and 1913. Some historians call it the second industrial revolution because of major increases in manufacturing and factory output.
But White said that those years were marked by erratic economic growth and that upturns were mostly fueled by millions of immigrants joining the U.S. workforce. Another factor was the seizing of land from Native Americans during U.S. expansion west. That meant exploiting natural resources along the way.
“This is the height of antimonopoly, political turmoil, the rise of labor in the United States,” said White, author of “The Republic for Which it Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896.” “And the reason was, people did not regard this as a particularly healthy economy.”
Why does Trump revere McKinley?
In his inaugural address, Trump called McKinley a “great president” and “natural business man,” who he said “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.” Hours later, Trump signed an executive order overturning an Obama administration directive and renaming America’s tallest peak Mount McKinley.
But today’s economy is immeasurably different than in McKinley’s time.
Back then, products were often fully assembled before being exported, and shipping could take months. Today’s goods often contain raw material components or parts that need to be assembled, that come from all over the world. Supply chains are calibrated based on instantaneous communications.
McKinley was a congressman representing a steel-producing Ohio district known as the “Napoleon of Protectionism.” He championed the Tariff Act of 1890, which set the then-highest import tax in U.S. history.
“It led to an increase in prices, a kind of inflation, even before the bill took effect,” said Robert Merry, author of “President McKinley: Architect of the American Century.” “The argument was, it was carte blanche for retailers and industrialists who basically jacked up their prices unnecessarily.”
Voters dealt Republicans landslide congressional defeats during the 1890 midterms when even McKinley lost. He eventually rebounded to win the presidency in 1896.
Ignoring the political problems tariffs created for Republicans, Trump instead has focused on repeating how high tariffs after the Civil War helped the U.S. pay off debts and eventually achieve government budget surpluses.
From 1866 to 1893, the U.S. ran nearly three straight decades of budget surpluses, fueled largely by tariffs and high domestic taxes on things like alcohol and tobacco as well as the sale of federal lands.
But federal budget surpluses eventually began to effectively decrease the U.S. money supply and cause deflation. Meanwhile, higher tariffs continued to increase the cost of living, which, coupled with a financial crisis in Great Britain, helped trigger the devastating economic depression known as the Panic of 1893.
McKinley changed his mind on tariffs
Shortly after winning reelection in 1900, meanwhile, McKinley began rethinking tariffs, as stronger U.S. manufacturing had made him more appreciative of foreign markets.
“McKinley began to see that, if we were going to be able to sell our goods overseas, as we were going to need to do because we would have more goods than we’d have a market for, we were going to have to accept goods as well,” Merry said.
He said that McKinley gave a speech in Buffalo, New York, on Sept. 5, 1901, outlining “this concept of reciprocity, which was: I’m prepared to bring down tariffs. Even me. Even William McKinley.”
Trump is now promising that similar, reciprocal tariffs will take effect next month. But pulling that off will be another difference from McKinley.
The day after his Buffalo speech, McKinley was shot. He died on Sept. 14, 1901.
